Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Nineteenth Overall Pick

Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.

We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?

Here are the results of our redraft so far:

1st Overall: Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
2nd Overall: Carey Price (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)
3rd Overall: Anze Kopitar (Carolina Hurricanes)
4th Overall: Jonathan Quick (Minnesota Wild)
5th Overall: Kris Letang (Montreal Canadiens)
6th Overall: Tuukka Rask (Columbus Blue Jackets)
7th Overall: Bobby Ryan (Chicago Blackhawks)
8th Overall: Marc-Edouard Vlasic (San Jose Sharks)
9th Overall: Ben Bishop (Ottawa Senators)
10th Overall: James Neal (Vancouver Canucks)
11th Overall: T.J. Oshie (Los Angeles Kings)
12th Overall: Keith Yandle (New York Rangers)
13th Overall: Paul Stastny (Buffalo Sabres)
14th Overall: Marc Staal (Washington Capitals)
15th Overall: Patric Hornqvist (New York Islanders)
16th Overall: Niklas Hjalmarsson (Atlanta Thrashers)
17th Overall: Anton Stralman (Phoenix Coyotes)
18th Overall: Jack Johnson (Nashville Predators)

Now we move forward to the 19th pick, which was held by the Detroit Red Wings.

To recap how this works:

• We will go through the 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
• The entire first round will be redrafted, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes.

Back in 2005, the Red Wings selected defenseman Jakub Kindl out of Kitchener of the OHL.  After being picked, Kindl’s offense took off at the junior level but that didn’t translate into much success in the NHL.  After spending parts of seven seasons with Detroit (spanning 273 games), the team cut bait with him last season, flipping him to Florida for a sixth round pick in 2017 and are presently paying him $360K (of his $2.4MM cap hit) not to play for them this year.  As for the Panthers, they waived Kindl last month and he is plying his trade in the AHL this season.

With the 19th pick of the 2005 NHL Redraft, who should the Red Wings select?  Cast your vote below!

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